RFD: news.admin.net-abuse reorganization
Tim Skirvin
REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
moderated group news.admin.announce (renames news.admin.net-abuse.announce)
unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.email
moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.policy
moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.reports
moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.sightings
unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
This is a formal Request for Discission (RFD) for the reorganization of
the news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy. This is not a Call For Votes
(CFV); you cannot vote at this time. Procedural details are below.
Newsgroup lines:
news.admin.announce Announcements for news adminstrators.(Moderated) (Moderated)
news.admin.net-abuse.email Discussion of abuse of email systems.
news.admin.net-abuse.policy Discussion of net abuse policy.(Moderated) (Moderated)
news.admin.net-abuse.reports Action reports about net abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
news.admin.net-abuse.sightings Sightings of possible net abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet Discussion of abuse of the Usenet system.
RATIONALE: all groups
The topic of net-abuse is a pressing issue on Usenet today. Currently,
there are two major groups for discussion of the topic: news.admin.
net-abuse.announce, a moderated forum for announcements about net abuse,
and news.admin.net-abuse.misc, a group for everything else.
Unfortunately, each of these groups suffer from their problems. news.
admin.net-abuse.announce brings in fairly high traffic for a moderated
group (oftentimes upwards of 40-50 per day), mostly consisting of
reports of action taken against net abuse. However, this group is also
used for important announcements, of general interest to all news
administrators. Because of its high traffic levels, however, most
administrators are unable to follow the group.
news.admin.net-abuse.misc, on the other hand, is an unmoderated forum.
As a result of this, it is very high traffic - usually upwards of
several hundred messages per day, with a goodly portion of them
crossposted among many unrelated or only vaguely-related groups. The
traffic has gotten high enough to make it difficult to follow the group
for those that wish to learn about and discuss net abuse.
This proposal would help solve all of the major problems of the news.
admin.net-abuse hierarchy. First of all, news.admin.net-abuse.announce
would be split into two groups: news.admin.net-abuse.reports, a moderated
group for the reports of action that make up the bulk of the current
group, and news.admin.announce, a moderated, low-traffic replacement for
news.admin.net-abuse.announce that would be of interest to all news
administrators.
Secondly, the problems of news.admin.net-abuse.misc would be alleviated
by the creation of four supplmental groups in the news.admin.net-abuse
hierarchy: news.admin.net-abuse.email, for discussion of email abuse,
news.admin.net-abuse.sightings, a robomoderated forum for users to
announce sightings of net abuse, news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, for
discussion of Usenet abuse, and news.admin.net-abuse.policy, a robo-
moderated forum for discussion of policies regarding net abuse that
disallows crossposts. The additional groups will allow users to read
messages only on those topics that they are interested in.
Several automated tools will be used to help manage the groups. Most
moderation will take place via auto-moderation bots; all groups will be
watched over by "Dave the Resurrector", a program that automatically
reposts cancelled messages. Other tools may be used as circumstances
require.
MODERATOR INFO: news.admin.announce
Moderator: Dave Barr <ba...@math.psu.edu>
Moderator: Abby Franquemont-Guillory <abb...@tezcat.net>
END MODERATOR INFO.
MODERATOR INFO: news.admin.net-abuse.policy
Moderator: Scott Forbes <for...@ihlpf.att.com>
Moderator: Tim Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu>
END MODERATOR INFO.
MODERATOR INFO: news.admin.net-abuse.reports
Moderator: Dave Barr <ba...@math.psu.edu>
Moderator: Paul Phillips <pa...@cerf.net>
Moderator: Joel Furr <jf...@acpub.duke.edu>
END MODERATOR INFO.
MODERATOR INFO: news.admin.net-abuse.sightings
Moderator: J.D. Falk <jdf...@cybernothing.org>
Moderator: Tim Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu>
END MODERATOR INFO.
CHARTER: news.admin.announce
news.admin.announce is a forum for important announcements for news
administrators. It is a moderated forum, watched over by a team of
moderators for added speed. Possible topics for messages include
announcements regarding news transport or browsing software,
Frequently Asked Questions lists, announcements of new EMP cancellers,
announcements of new cancellation criteria, reports that directly
relate to the future of Usenet, reports of major net-related
censorship (such as the Communications Decency Act), and so forth.
news.admin.announce is moderated by a team of moderators. The moderators
will approve any message that they feel fits the following criteria:
1. The moderators feel the message is important for most or all news
administrators.
2. The formatting has <75 characters per line.
3. The message is not a binary, nor will it break standard Usenet
readers.
4. Followups for the message are set to one group only.
Unapproved messages will be cancelled. At any time, moderators can be added
or removed by a majority vote of the then-current moderators.
END CHARTER.
CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.email
news.admin.net-abuse.email is a forum for discussion of possible abuses
of e-mail. Possible topics include mailbombing, denial-of-service attacks,
"listserv bombs", unsolicited and/or unwanted mail, email address lists,
mailing list abuse, large-scale mailings in general, chain letters, "email
viruses" such as Good Times, chain letters such as MAKE.MONEY.FAST,
filtering software such as procmail, and so forth. Flames received
through email are not on-topic, unless they are part of another
problem.
news.admin.net-abuse.email is unmoderated.
END CHARTER.
[CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.misc
news.admin.net-abuse.misc is a forum for discussion of possible net
abuse not covered by the rest of the news.admin.net-abuse.* hiearchy.
Possible topics include ping-storming, site aliasing, denial of service
attacks, and anything else that does not fit into the other forums in the
news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy.
news.admin.net-abuse.misc is unmoderated.
END CHARTER.]
CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.policy
news.admin.net-abuse.policy is a moderated forum for discussion of
policy and site-management issues related to net abuse. Possible topics
include Acceptable Use Policies, what actions should be taken against
abusers, discussion of third-party cancel messages, possible actions against
abusive sites such as rogue site declarations, discussion of what is and
is not net abuse, and so forth.
news.admin.net-abuse.policy is a moderated forum. The robomoderator of
the group will disallow any and all crossposted messages, message spews,
binary messages, and any possible attacks on the group as required. Dave
the Resurrector will be run on the group, forged approvals will be
automatically cancelled, and other programs may be used as circumstances
require.
news.admin.net-abuse.policy is moderated by a robot moderator, run by a
team of operators. The robot will automatically approve and post messages
that:
1. Are not crossposted.
2. Are formatted for <75 columns.
3. Cannot be determined to directly violate the charter of the group by
the robot moderator alone (for which the criterion will be published.)
Messages not approved by the robot moderator will be sent back to the
sender with a copy of the charter, though at most one copy of the
information will be sent per week. Messages with forged Approval: headers
will be automatically cancelled, and a report may be mailed to the offender.
Changes to the robot moderator can only be enacted by a majority vote of
the then-current operators; similarly, operators can be added or removed
by a majority vote of the then-current operators.
END CHARTER.
CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.reports
news.admin.net-abuse.reports is a moderated forum for reports of action
against net abuse. Appropriate subjects include cancellation notices
(EMP/ECP, spew, binary, and others), status reports from individual
systems of action taken against abusers, results of tracking campaigns,
"rogue site" declarations, and the like.
news.admin.net-abuse.reports is moderated by a team of moderators.
Followups will be set to one of the other news.admin.net-abuse.* groups as
appropriate. Dave the Resurrector will be run on the group, forged
approvals will be automatically cancelled, and other programs may be run
at the discretion of the moderators.
news.admin.net-abuse.reports is moderated by a team of moderators.
The moderators will approve messages based on the following criteria:
1. The message is a report of actions taken relating to net abuse.
2. The message is formatted for <75 columns.
3. The message is not determined to directly violate the charter of the
group.
The moderators may auto-approve posts from certain individuals, at their
own discretion.
At any time, moderators can be added or removed by a majority vote of
the then-current moderators. Messages with forged Approval: lines not
approved by the moderators will be cancelled.
END CHARTER.
CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.sightings
news.admin.net-abuse.sightings is a forum for reports of sightings of
net abuse in one form or another. It is a robomoderated forum, allowing
only properly formatted posts; violations will be either ignored or
cancelled, at the discretion of the bot's operator. Discussion of the
messages posted here is not on-topic for this group; followups are to be
set strictly out of the group, into the appropriate news.admin.net-abuse.*
group.
news.admin.net-abuse.sightings is moderated by a robot moderator, run by
a team of operators. The robot will automatically approve and post messages
according to the following criteria:
1. The message is formatted for <75 columns, excepting the copy of the
spotted abuse.
2. The message is formatted in plain text.
3. The message follows a publicized template specified by the operator
of the robot moderator. For example, the following format may be
standard for a Usenet abuse sighting:
--
(headers)
Subject: [usenet] (Standard Subject)
Followup-to: news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
From: (valid address) -or- Reply-to: (valid address)
(other standard headers)
(body)
Abuse-spotted-in: (first group spotted)
Abuse-Subject: (subject from abuse)
Type-of-abuse: (EMP, ECP, binary, forgery, etc. No set rules here)
Description: (description and/or comments)
-
(Full headers of the abuse)
(Full body of the abuse)
--
Messages will be automatically reformatted by the robot moderator for
archival and standardization purposes, using procedures established by
the operator of the robot moderator. For example, the following changes
may be made, if deemed appropriate:
1. Only the first fifteen lines of the body of the abuse will be
posted; the rest will be archived, but not posted.
2. The abuse will be reformatted to fit into 75 columns.
3. If the abuse would cause technical problems with some newsreaders,
the problem text will be replaced with X's; if the abuse would
cause problems with most newsreaders, the article may not be
posted at all.
4. Several headers will be added at the discretion of the operator of the
robot moderator, such as the following:
a. X-Apparently-Complain-To: <postm...@apparent.site.of.abuse>
b. X-Archive-Number: (a unique number)
c. X-Note: Archives are kept at (a site for the archives)
Messages that do not meet these criteria will be sent back to the sender
with a copy of this charter and a listing of the published templates,
though at most one copy of this information will be sent out per week.
Messages with forged Approval: headers will be automatically cancelled,
and a report may be mailed to the offender. Changes to the robot
moderator can only be enacted by a majority vote of the then-current
operators; similarly, operators can be added or removed by a majority
vote of the then-current operators.
END CHARTER.
CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet is a forum for discussion of possible abuses
of Usenet (as defined in news.announce.newusers). Possible topics include
"spamming" or Excessive Multi-Posting (EMP), Excessive Cross-Posting (ECP),
forged or third-party cancellations, broken Usenet gateways, forgery of
another user, forged approval in moderated groups, massively crossposted
"flametrolls", abuse of the newsgroup creation system, general purpose
"netiquette", and so forth.
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet is unmoderated.
END CHARTER.
CHARTER: all groups
The news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy is for discussion of abuse of Usenet
and/or the Internet; it is not for discussion of abuse on such networks,
such as flames or personal attacks.
Binaries are specifically prohibited from all groups in the news.admin.*
hierarchy, except as examples of other abuse. Dave the Resurrector, a
program that reposts cancelled articles, will be run on the hierarchy at
all times. Spams, gateway spews, and other attacks on the system itself
will be removed as appropriate.
END CHARTER.
PROCEDURE:
This is a request for discussion, not a call for votes. In this phase
of the process, any potential problems with the proposed newsgroups
should be raised and resolved. The discussion period will continue
for a minimum of 21 days (starting from when the first RFD for this
proposal is posted to news.announce.newgroups), after which a Call For
Votes (CFV) will be posted by a neutral vote taker. Please do not
attempt to vote until this happens.
All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups.
This RFD attempts to comply fully with the Usenet newsgroup creation
guidelines outlined in "How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup" and "How
to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal". Please refer to these
documents (available in news.announce.newgroups) if you have any
questions about the process.
DISTRIBUTION:
This RFD has been posted to to the following newsgroups:
news.admin.net-abuse.announce, news.admin.net-abuse.misc,
news.admin.censorship, news.admin.hierarchies, news.admin.technical,
news.groups, news.announce.newgroups
-
Proponent: Tim Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu>
Taki Kogoma
[Posted and emailed.]
George J Kamenz <afn4...@afn.org> appears to have submitted message
<Pine.A32.3.93.960709...@freenet4.afn.org> to news.groups:
>I suppose I'm the only one who doesn't understand the quoted text. Would
>someone be kind enough to explain what is meant by it?
>
>On 9 Jul 1996, Tim Skirvin wrote:
>> The news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy is for discussion of abuse of Usenet
>> and/or the Internet; it is not for discussion of abuse on such networks,
>> such as flames or personal attacks.
There is a difference between abuse *of* the net (e.g. excessive use
of network bandwidth/storage capacity) and abuse *on* the net (e.g. J.
Random Flamewar). The latter does not impact on the overall ability
of Usenet to function. The former does.
--
Capt. Gym Z. Quirk | "I'll get a life when someone
(Known to some as Taki Kogoma) | demonstrates that it would be
qu...@swcp.com | superior to what I have now."
Veteran of the '91 sf-lovers re-org. | -- Gym Quirk
George J Kamenz
I suppose I'm the only one who doesn't understand the quoted text. Would
someone be kind enough to explain what is meant by it?
On 9 Jul 1996, Tim Skirvin wrote:
Scot Kamins
[posted & e-mailed]
In article <8369451...@uunet.uu.net>, tski...@uiuc.edu (Tim Skirvin)
wrote (in part):
> news.admin.net-abuse.reports Action reports about net
abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
> news.admin.net-abuse.sightings Sightings of possible net
abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
I have a problem with the name "reports" in
"news.admin.net-abuse.reports." When I first read it, I assumed it was the
place to report net abuses - when in fact I should report them to
"news.admin.net-abuse.sightings."
Thus I propose that an alternate name be found for "reports" such as
"actions-taken" or "determinations" or the like.
In general, I certainly agree with the need for the re-org (having often
been thrawted in looking for info in the current groups) and at first
glance much of the current proposal looks well thought-out and makes
sense. Thanks for doing the work!
Scot Kamins | Proponent, rec.collecting.books
671 28th Street | I collect Modern Library hardbacks
San Francisco 94131| (VG/VG condition) 1917-1970
(415) 282-8872 | with numbered DJ's.Wanna trade?
Lynn Diana Gazis
George J Kamenz (afn4...@afn.org) wrote:
: I suppose I'm the only one who doesn't understand the quoted text. Would
: someone be kind enough to explain what is meant by it?
: On 9 Jul 1996, Tim Skirvin wrote:
: > The news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy is for discussion of abuse of Usenet
: > and/or the Internet; it is not for discussion of abuse on such networks,
: > such as flames or personal attacks.
It means that it is intended to discuss abuses of the network such as
actions which overload the system (spamming, mailbombing), forgeries, and
the like (things which are generally recognized by system administrators
to be severely abusive of the network), and not for violations of
netiquette (important though netiquette may be) such as flaming.
(In case it isn't clear, I'll also add that "spamming" and "mailbombing"
have specific definitions - spamming is not a crosspost to several more
or less relevant groups, even if some people find the crosspost annoying,
and "mailbombing" is not getting angry email from three or four people
who didn't like your post. If someone deliberately sends you a binary
file, or numerous copies of a message, or entire newsgroup threads, just
to flood your email box, *that* is mailbombing.)
Lynn Gazis-Sax
Bernhard Muenzer
tski...@uiuc.edu (Tim Skirvin) wrote:
>CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.sightings
[..]
>3. The message follows a publicized template specified by the operator
> of the robot moderator. For example, the following format may be
> standard for a Usenet abuse sighting:
>--
>(headers)
>Subject: [usenet] (Standard Subject)
>Followup-to: news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
Some posters wanting to report abuse might still be paying for a service
that doesn't let them set Followup-To: properly.
If the Subject: contains the required ["[email]"|"[usenet]"] identifier,
the robomoderator could do this job (instead of rejecting the article).
[..]
>(Full body of the abuse)
^^^^
This may be nice if you want to augment the learning set for a bot, but
I won't include the whole text of every MMF posting or every report of
Slaton's latest email address.
--
int m,u,e=0;float l,_,I;main(){for(;1863-e;putchar((++e>923&&952>
e?60-m:u)["\n)ed.fsg@eum(rezneuM drahnreB"]))for(u=_=l=0;80-(m=e%
81)&&I*l+_*_<6&&20-++u;_=2*l*_+e/81*.09-1,l=I)I=l*l-_*_-2+m/27.;}
John Lull
In the waning years of the 20th century, tski...@uiuc.edu (Tim
Skirvin) wrote (with possible deletions):
> 2. The formatting has <75 characters per line.
This is a major annoyance when an original post approaches the limit.
When quoted, the quoted portion will often exceed the limit, and must
be reformatted. This is a hassle for the person quoting, and makes
the response more difficult to read. I would suggest rewording
something like:
2. Original content is formatted as <75 characters per line. The
criteria used to distinguish original from quoted content will be
published.
> 3. The message is not a binary, nor will it break standard Usenet
> readers.
> 4. Followups for the message are set to one group only.
I would suggest adding these requirements to ALL your robo-moderated
groups.
John-Mozena-IDT
In article <Pine.A32.3.93.960709...@freenet4.afn.org>,
George J Kamenz <afn4...@afn.org> wrote:
>I suppose I'm the only one who doesn't understand the quoted text. Would
>someone be kind enough to explain what is meant by it?
>
>On 9 Jul 1996, Tim Skirvin wrote:
>
>> and/or the Internet; it is not for discussion of abuse on such networks,
>> such as flames or personal attacks.
I took this to mean that what is to be discussed is the abuse of the
system, rather than abuse of another person *using* the system.
Fr'instance: one post abusing Tim Skirvin (sorry, Tim) is not n.a.n-a.*
fodder. Spamming that article across multiple newsgroups *is*. Net abuse
and abuse using the Net are two separate topics. AFAIK, there's no NG
devoted to reports or discussion of abuse *using* the Net...unless you
count alt.fan.speedbump (too easy). Any thoughts?
--
John C. Mozena . mo...@alliance.net . ar...@detroit.freenet.org
"I'm extraordinarily patient provided I get my own way in the end."
-Lady Margaret Thatcher
*Http://www.alliance.net/~moz19/home.html *** Finger for Geek Code Block.*
Tim Skirvin
kam...@tlg.net (Scot Kamins) writes:
>> news.admin.net-abuse.reports Action reports about net
>>abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>> news.admin.net-abuse.sightings Sightings of possible net
>>abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>I have a problem with the name "reports" in
>"news.admin.net-abuse.reports."
Join the club... <g> Unfortunately, I still haven't found a
good replacement for it. 'actions-taken', 'determinations'...both are
just too clumsy, IMO.
If somebody can think of a good, convincing name, I'd love to go
for it.
- Tim Skirvin (tski...@uiuc.edu)
--
<a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin">Skirv's Homepage</a>
<a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/daemons/">The Daemons</a>
Tim Skirvin
m...@gsf.de (Bernhard Muenzer) writes:
>If the Subject: contains the required ["[email]"|"[usenet]"] identifier,
>the robomoderator could do this job (instead of rejecting the article).
I'm all for making the moderator bot be as lenient as we can
make it.
>>(Full body of the abuse)
> ^^^^
>This may be nice if you want to augment the learning set for a bot, but
>I won't include the whole text of every MMF posting or every report of
>Slaton's latest email address.
I don't think that posting it all would necessarily be required,
but having the full body *is* important, IMO. It'd be better to just
have it for the archiving site.
Tim Skirvin
mo...@allinux1.alliance.net (John-Mozena-IDT) writes:
>AFAIK, there's no NG devoted to reports or discussion of abuse *using* the
>Net...unless you count alt.fan.speedbump (too easy). Any thoughts?
If someone wants to make a Big-8 replacement for
alt.usenet.kooks, I'm all for it... <g>
Jonathan Grobe
In article <4s1qhk$8...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>,
Tim Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
>kam...@tlg.net (Scot Kamins) writes:
>
>>> news.admin.net-abuse.reports Action reports about net
>>>abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>
>>"news.admin.net-abuse.reports."
>
> Join the club... <g> Unfortunately, I still haven't found a
>good replacement for it. 'actions-taken', 'determinations'...both are
>just too clumsy, IMO.
>
> If somebody can think of a good, convincing name, I'd love to go
>for it.
>
news.admin.net-abuse.cancel-reports
The other types of action reports should be posted to other
news.admin.net-abuse.* groups.
I believe there is not much interest in reading cancel reports. Given
that all spams which meet certain criteria are cancelled, the only
item of any interest at all is how many groups the spam was posted to.
There is more interest in other kinds of
--
Jonathan Grobe <gr...@netins.net> Note: All my comments on the
group-mentors list and alt.config are simply my opinion.
Shane Castle
In news.announce.newgroups, Tim Skirvin<tski...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
>Newsgroup lines:
>news.admin.announce Announcements for news adminstrators.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>news.admin.net-abuse.email Discussion of abuse of email systems.
>news.admin.net-abuse.policy Discussion of net abuse policy.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>news.admin.net-abuse.reports Action reports about net abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>news.admin.net-abuse.sightings Sightings of possible net abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>news.admin.net-abuse.usenet Discussion of abuse of the Usenet system.
What's with the (Moderated) (Moderated) descriptions?
Feeling a little redundant?
--
Shane Castle | "Perfection, then, is finally achieved, not
Boulder County Info Svcs | when there is nothing left to add, but when
Boulder CO USA | there is nothing left to take away."
| - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Diana Hamilton
In article <4s1qhk$8...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>,
Tim Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
>>I have a problem with the name "reports" in
>>"news.admin.net-abuse.reports."
>
> Join the club... <g> Unfortunately, I still haven't found a
>good replacement for it. 'actions-taken', 'determinations'...both are
>just too clumsy, IMO.
Maybe just "actions"? Still not ideal, but I was also confused at first
glance at the list of newsgroups.
Otherwise, I welcome the proposal- I gave up long ago on trying to
read noisy nanam regularly.
--
Diana Hamilton -- hami...@umbc.edu -- Baltimore, MD USA
John-Mozena-IDT
In article <4s1qnl$8...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>,
Tim Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
>mo...@allinux1.alliance.net (John-Mozena-IDT) writes:
>
>>AFAIK, there's no NG devoted to reports or discussion of abuse *using* the
>>Net...unless you count alt.fan.speedbump (too easy). Any thoughts?
>
> If someone wants to make a Big-8 replacement for
>alt.usenet.kooks, I'm all for it... <g>
In your own words...d'oh! That's true. Anythig unmoderated is going to
become the Palmer/Wotan/Boursy/Maharaj/Vulis/Grubor(?)/*Lotus/etc.
flamefest. OTOH, maybe a group that was moderated to cut all of that crap
out (I'd feel for the moderator) would be useful. There *is* a need for
discussion of what is and isn't acceptable behavior in Usenet debate
(witness Vulis/Isley, Boursy/Kamens, etc).
Of course, I have neither time nor inclination to write an RFD. Any takers?
Kai Henningsen
tski...@uiuc.edu (Tim Skirvin) wrote on 09.07.96 in <8369451...@uunet.uu.net>:
> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> moderated group news.admin.announce (renames news.admin.net-abuse.announce)
> unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.email
> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.policy
> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.reports
> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.sightings
> unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
Good work!
Kai
--
Internet: k...@khms.westfalen.de
Bang: major_backbone!khms.westfalen.de!kai
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
J.D. Falk
In news.groups, Tim Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu> wrote...
> >I have a problem with the name "reports" in
> >"news.admin.net-abuse.reports."
>
> Join the club... <g> Unfortunately, I still haven't found a
> good replacement for it. 'actions-taken', 'determinations'...both are
> just too clumsy, IMO.
>
> If somebody can think of a good, convincing name, I'd love to go
> for it.
How 'bout "results?"
> - Tim Skirvin (tski...@uiuc.edu)
--
---------========== J.D. Falk <jdf...@cybernothing.org> =========---------
| "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for those we despise, |
| we don't believe in it at all." |
| -- Stephen G. Morrison |
----========== http://www.cybernothing.org/jdfalk/home.html ==========----
J.D. Falk
In news.groups, Bernhard Muenzer <m...@gsf.de> wrote...
> Some posters wanting to report abuse might still be paying for a service
> that doesn't let them set Followup-To: properly.
> If the Subject: contains the required ["[email]"|"[usenet]"] identifier,
> the robomoderator could do this job (instead of rejecting the article).
Good point. I'd certainly be willing to allow that. In fact,
it could take precedence over the orginial Followup-to: header, unless it
is "Followup-to: poster".
> [..]
> >(Full body of the abuse)
> ^^^^
>
> This may be nice if you want to augment the learning set for a bot, but
> I won't include the whole text of every MMF posting or every report of
> Slaton's latest email address.
The rationale behind that stipulation is that partial text may be
skipping important details (different people have different ideas about
what's worth including.) IMHO, this requires more discussion, though I
have a feeling that there is no perfect solution here.
--
---------========== J.D. Falk <jdf...@cybernothing.org> =========---------
| "Just take your pills and kiss your apogee goodbye." |
| -Crow T. Robot, MST3K |
----========== http://www.cybernothing.org/jdfalk/home.html ==========----
Karen Lofstrom
Jonathan Grobe (gr...@worf.netins.net) wrote:
: I believe there is not much interest in reading cancel reports. Given
: that all spams which meet certain criteria are cancelled, the only
: item of any interest at all is how many groups the spam was posted to.
I look through the reports regularly, to see if any users from LavaNet
or other Hawaiian ISPs have spammed. Don't look at much besides the
originating site, but it's very useful info to me.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tender, smells of goat, with a deep blue mold skin,
dusted with charcoal.
Chris Smith
Although I am very new to this group IMHO the re-organization makes a
lot of sense. I am trying to help out whenever I can by reporting
abuse and it would make it easier for me to see what has already been
addressed with the proposed changes in place.
Chris
"As nations we're divided but as people we are one"
Pat Benatar
chris...@zymark.com
Zoli Fekete, keeper of hungarian-faq
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
On 11 Jul 1996, Tim Skirvin wrote:
> If someone wants to make a Big-8 replacement for
> alt.usenet.kooks, I'm all for it... <g>
Given what we've been seeing lately, misc.activism.crankery seems like
the name called for that ;-(, for the vulisoid brigade pretty much
eclipsed all the lower level kookery output both in volume and effect!
Looks like we could channel over there a good half of the current traffic
on NANAM plus a good chunk from news.groups...
- --
Zoli fek...@bc.edu, keeper of <http://www.hix.com/hungarian-faq/>
*SELLERS BEWARE: I will never buy anything from companies associated
*with inappropriate online advertising (unsolicited commercial email,
*excessive multiposting etc), and discourage others from doing so too!
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George Bonser
In article <6CfN$5wz...@khms.westfalen.de>,
k...@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen) writes:
> tski...@uiuc.edu (Tim Skirvin) wrote on 09.07.96 in <8369451...@uunet.uu.net>:
>
>> moderated group news.admin.announce (renames news.admin.net-abuse.announce)
>> unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.email
>> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.policy
>> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.reports
>> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.sightings
>> unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
>
>
> Kai
I agree.
--
George Bonser -- gr...@cris.com
Member: South Bay / Silicon Valley Network
oriole.sbay.org
Stephen Satchell
> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> moderated group news.admin.announce (renames news.admin.net-abuse.announce)
> unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.email
> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.policy
> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.reports
> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.sightings
> unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
I would recommend that all the above groups have added to their
robomoderation the following criteria:
1) Every posting shall be to the single group (no crossposting), and any
multiposts involving these groups will be, where possible, detected and
robocancelled.
2) The sender's e-mail address, and any Reply-To: address shall be
checked for a valid domain name. This permits anonymous postings but
eliminates messages with misformed headers or obvious forgeries. No
attempt need be made to verify the user information (stuff to the left of
the "@" or to the right of the final "!").
I would sit still for a maximum of six newsgroups, but I would prefer none
at all. If you are going to allow cross-posting, I'd like to restrict the
other five groups to groups outside news.admin.* to keep the extra crap
down. (Not all newsreaders filter the second and subsequent appearance of
articles -- especially NetScape last time I tried it.)
--
Stephen Satchell, Satchell Evaluations
http://www.accutek.com/~satchell
Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim -- George Santayana
Russ Allbery
Stephen Satchell <satc...@accutek.com> writes:
> I would recommend that all the above groups have added to their
> robomoderation the following criteria:
> 1) Every posting shall be to the single group (no crossposting), and any
> multiposts involving these groups will be, where possible, detected and
> robocancelled.
I strongly object to this clause. It is not appropriate to make
cancelling non-crossposted messages to other newsgroups part of the job of
a moderator. Moderators deal with the groups they moderate; they should
not, in their capacity as moderators, be cancelling anything out of groups
that they don't moderate.
Now if you were to make that more specific and just say that the parts of
a multipost posted to these particular newsgroups may be rejected by the
moderation software, that's more reasonable. Cancels are an unnecessary
and inappropriate tool to do that; MD5 checksums will catch multiposted
articles just fine and the script would never have to approve them.
I think more policing than that, even to the extent of dealing with
multiposted articles with slight variations, is unwarranted.
> 2) The sender's e-mail address, and any Reply-To: address shall be
> checked for a valid domain name. This permits anonymous postings but
> eliminates messages with misformed headers or obvious forgeries. No
> attempt need be made to verify the user information (stuff to the left
> of the "@" or to the right of the final "!").
I don't think it is appropriate to reject all postings by someone solely
because their DNS server happens to be temporarily down.
> I would sit still for a maximum of six newsgroups, but I would prefer
> none at all. If you are going to allow cross-posting, I'd like to
> restrict the other five groups to groups outside news.admin.* to keep
> the extra crap down. (Not all newsreaders filter the second and
> subsequent appearance of articles -- especially NetScape last time I
> tried it.)
There is a point at which I think it's good to work around broken
software, and there's a point at which I think the software should be
considered so completely broken that it should be discarded. Software
which does not properly deal with crossposts falls into the latter
category. Every decent newsreader written in the past ten years can
handle that, and its likely that there are newsreaders that correctly deal
with crossposts available for every platform I have ever heard of and
probably a few more.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Evan Kirshenbaum
In article <4s1qhk$8...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>,
Tim Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
>kam...@tlg.net (Scot Kamins) writes:
>
>>> news.admin.net-abuse.reports Action reports about net
>>>abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>>> news.admin.net-abuse.sightings Sightings of possible net
>>>abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>
>>"news.admin.net-abuse.reports."
>
> Join the club... <g> Unfortunately, I still haven't found a
>good replacement for it. 'actions-taken', 'determinations'...both are
>just too clumsy, IMO.
>
> If somebody can think of a good, convincing name, I'd love to go
>for it.
Maybe "responses" or "reactions"?
----
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Giving money and power to government
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |is like giving whiskey and car keys
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |to teenage boys.
| P.J. O'Rourke
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(415)857-7572
Bob Allisat
This article has been systematically cancelled for the last three days.
It is being reposted for the author from a different news host in hopes
of bypassing the censor(s) who do not like the opinions of the author.
Tim "Gone" Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
: This is a formal Request for Discission (RFD) for the reorganization of
: the news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy. This is not a Call For Votes
: (CFV); you cannot vote at this time. Procedural details are below.
Sounds like a great idea Timmy. Only you missed a few of the new
absolutely necessary new newsgroups. Hope the following fills in
the gaps and provides a more balanced perspective. BTW How many
times a year do you fellas plan to reorganize this mess? I for
one am getting a tittle tired of *.reorgs. Good luck anyways...
REQUEST FOR RIDICULE (RFR): news.admin.net-abuse reorganization (Again?!)
moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.squash.tim_skirvin.and-gang
unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.syscops.netnazis.for-real
unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.scapgoating_minority.bashing
unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.cryptomoderation_freaks
unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.anti-witchhunt.proliberty
[CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.squash.tim_skirvin.and-gang
news.admin.net-abuse.squash.tim_skirvin.and-gang is a forum for the
discussion of net abuse by tiny Tim Skirvin and his paranoid gang of
teenaged power/control freaks. Possible topics include forged message
cancelations, Mailbombing campaigns of ISP harrassment and massive
and gross violations of American, Canadian and European Postal and
electronic communications laws.
news.admin.net-abuse.tim_skirvin.and-gang is moderated by a seasoned
duo of moderators. The moderators will squelch mercilessly any message
that they feel fits the following criteria:
1. The moderators feel the message is written for most or all news
administrators without concern for our civil liberties and
human rights as law abiiding citizens.
2. The message is from Tim Skirvin and any of his unimaginative
freedom bashing clodheads. You can see that this is the same
as number one above. I strive to be thorough.
3. Followups for the message are set to leass than 21 newsgroups.
4. The message does not include the words "fuck", "Consumer Protection
legislation" and/or extremely bad poetry.
MODERATOR INFO: news.admin.net-abuse.
Moderator: Stephen Boursy <bou...@thanks.steve>
Moderator: John Grubor <ag...@watchout.world>
END MODERATOR INFO.
END CHARTER.]
[CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.scapgoating_minority.bashing
news.admin.net-abuse.scapgoating_minority.bashing is a forum for
the discussion of the heinous scapgoating and minority bashing that
is the real reason behind the account cancelations and forged message
and article cancelations perpetrated by Chris Lewis and his type A
personailty cancelmoose crowd. Under the cover of preventing net.abuse
these fellows can get away with anything they please.
news.admin.net-abuse.scapgoating_minority.bashing is unmoderated
END CHARTER.
CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.syscops.netnazis.for-real
news.admin.net-abuse.syscops.netnazis.for-real is a forum for the
discussion of how system administrators imagine themselves to be
capable of smashing all of our rights to privacy and security of
our correspondences to preserve their power and sense of place in
the world. In fact they should be playing with their machines and
*NOT* our freaking lives.
news.admin.net-abuse.syscops.netnazis.for-real is unmoderated.
END CHARTER.
CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.cryptomoderation_freaks
news.admin.net-abuse.cryptomoderation_freaks is a forum for the
discussion of how some people just don't understand the meaning of
the word UNMODERATED and imagine it signifies an approval to change
things other people contribute even if the forum is UNMODERATED.
Sheesh guys... just piss off and go for a slew of your own, infinitely
dull and tedious MODERATED newsgroups like Mr. "King Teen Censor"
Skirvin done done. What a bunch of prissy mo-rons.
news.admin.net-abuse.cryptomoderation_freaks is unmoderated
END CHARTER.
CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.anti-witchhunt.proliberty
news.admin.net-abuse.anti-witchhunt.proliberty is a forum for the
discussion of how there should be no more crazy, covert and anti-
democratic attacks on law abiding, constritutionally protected
citizans by rich, university educated, computer professionals and
hobbyists under the guise of preventing the fake boogey man of
"net abuse".
news.admin.net-abuse.anti-witchhunt.proliberty is unmoderated
END CHARTER.
PROCEDURE:
This is a request for ridicule and a call for laughter which will,
hopefully embarass and harrass the intended and incredibley pompous
targets of my wicked humour. In this phase of the process, any
potential pompousity arrogance and obvious and long standing injustice
should be brought to light in a piercingly funny manner. The laughing
period will continue (but not be limited to. IPSO FACTO) a minimum of
21 days (starting from when this RFR for is posted to hell and back),
after which a Call For Kleenex (CFK) will be posted by myself to dry
away all those tears of ha-ha's. Please do not attempt to wipe your
face until this happens.
All discussion of this proposal should be posted to hell and back.
This RFR attempts to comply fully with the Usenet satirical and
comedy creation guidelines outlined in "How to Poke Good Clean Fun
At Overly Serious and Naive New Usenet Newsgroup Creators" and "How
Best To Deal With Dictators Of The Most Innocuos Kind". Please refer
to these documents (available in earth.general) if you have any
lingering need to be entertained any further.
DISTRIBUTION:
This RFR has been posted to to the following newsgroups:
news.admin.net-abuse.misc,news.admin.censorship,news.admin.hierarchies,news.admin.technical,news.groups,news.announce.newgroups,tor.cabal,can.infohighway,alt.journalism,alt.news.media,earth.general,alt.hell.and.back
-
Opponant: Bob "Thou Shalt Not Underestimate Me" Allisat <b...@vrx.net>
Dave Barr
In article <4s75a4$1...@villa.fc.net>, Bob Allisat <b...@vrx.net> wrote:
>This article has been systematically cancelled for the last three days.
Bzzt. Someone who shall remain nameless but is a few neurons short
of a dozen insists on crossposting it to news.admin.net-abuse.announce,
and so it is rejected.
--Dave
Tim Skirvin
jdf...@cyberNOTHING.org (J.D. Falk) writes:
[on news.admin.net-abuse.reports' name]
>> If somebody can think of a good, convincing name, I'd love to go
>> for it.
> How 'bout "results?"
"I've gotten 10,000 orders for my product since I spammed, so
there!"
Ugh. Otherwise, it's good...
(Hmm. Let's throw out some suggestions; somebody yell at me for
them. .countermeasures? .reports.sightings and .reports.actions?
Hmm...)
- Tim Skirvin (tski...@uiuc.edu)
--
Tim Skirvin
satc...@accutek.com (Stephen Satchell) writes:
>I would recommend that all the above groups have added to their
>robomoderation the following criteria:
>1) Every posting shall be to the single group (no crossposting), and any
>multiposts involving these groups will be, where possible, detected and
I don't like it. It doesn't allow reposts of any sort, and it
effects other groups out of hand...
>2) The sender's e-mail address, and any Reply-To: address shall be
>checked for a valid domain name.
Hmm...I'm not sure how trustworthy this would be in most cases.
That's the main reason I don't like it; otherwise...well, I don't
particularly like setting any rules if I don't have to, and this isn't
that much of a problem really...
Jim Riley
In article <8369451...@uunet.uu.net> Tim Skirvin wrote:
>
> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
>moderated group news.admin.announce (renames news.admin.net-abuse.announce)
> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.reports
Isn't nana.reports really the rename of nana.announce? Isn't this
where the current moderators of nana.announce will be moving as well
as the bulk of the traffic? What is the fallback if one part of the
proposal is defeated? You would end up with (a) nana.announce and
nana.reports, if the "renaming" is defeated but nana.reports is approved;
Or (b) end up news.admin.announce and *no* reports groups, if the "renaming"
is passed and nana.reports is defeated.
On the other hand, if you make the reports group the "rename", you will at
worst end up with no group for making "important" announcements, which is
essentially the status quo.
The fallback position for the other proposed groups is that they could
continue to use nana.misc.
>CHARTER: news.admin.announce
>
>news.admin.announce is a forum for important announcements for news
>administrators. It is a moderated forum, watched over by a team of
>moderators for added speed. Possible topics for messages include
>announcements regarding news transport or browsing software,
>Frequently Asked Questions lists, announcements of new EMP cancellers,
>announcements of new cancellation criteria, reports that directly
>relate to the future of Usenet, reports of major net-related
>censorship (such as the Communications Decency Act), and so forth.
>
>news.admin.announce is moderated by a team of moderators. The moderators
>will approve any message that they feel fits the following criteria:
>
>1. The moderators feel the message is important for most or all news
> administrators.
Since this group will in effect be the Voice of the Cabal, what determines
whether an article is "important for most or all news administrators"?
Does approval of an article for posting imply approval by the moderators?
Take the issue of UDP. There has been in recent times, the implementation
of UDP against Sprynet (implemented by cancellation by John Milburn), as
well as calls for UDP via aliasing against Interramp, Earthlink, Panix,
Rockbridge, and the Province of Ontario. Would the moderators have approved
articles advocating any of these UDPs?
What about the posting of information on the mass posting to
alt.religion.scientology? Would Dick Depew's taking up of bincancels
have warranted announcement? What about a rebuttal from John Stanley or
Dave Hayes?
A lot of these problems would be simplified if news.admin.announce were
the mouthpiece of an executive committee answerable to an actual association
of ISPs.
> At any time, moderators can be added
>or removed by a majority vote of the then-current moderators.
This like most of the other moderator panels, are panels of 2. A majority
of 2 is 2. Maybe it is time to have some larger overseeing authority
for newsgroups central to operation of Usenet (this could also include
news.announce.newsgroups).
>CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.policy
>
>news.admin.net-abuse.policy is a moderated forum for discussion of
>policy and site-management issues related to net abuse. Possible topics
>include Acceptable Use Policies, what actions should be taken against
>abusers, discussion of third-party cancel messages, possible actions
>against abusive sites such as rogue site declarations, discussion of what is
>and is not net abuse, and so forth.
>
>news.admin.net-abuse.policy is a moderated forum. The robomoderator of
>the group will disallow any and all crossposted messages, message spews,
>binary messages, and any possible attacks on the group as required. Dave
>the Resurrector will be run on the group, forged approvals will be
>automatically cancelled, and other programs may be used as circumstances
>require.
The relationship between nana.policy; and nana.email, nana.usenet, and
nana.misc is unclear. Is nana.policy the place for discussion that is
not-crossposted, in which case the other 3 risk becoming garbage dumps?
Where would discussion of the Lightning Bolt software take place. Initially
reports would have been on nana.sightings, with perhaps some reaction in
nana.reports. Would the discussion then move to nana.policy or nana.email,
or would there be the possiblity of two separate threads?
Where would discussion about cancellation of copyrighted software be
discussed? Is this a policy discussion or a usenet discussion?
Would cross-posting to news.answers or news.software.nntp be disallowed
for nana.policy?
Maybe it would be better to make nana.email, nana.usenet, and nana.misc
all robomoderated, with *limited* crossposting. Crossposting could be
restricted to say 3 groups, from a pre-approved list. There might be a need
for limited tuning by human moderators - such as allowing cross-posting
between nana.usenet and alt.religion.scientology. If these groups were
robomoderated, then the question is does nana.policy perform a distinct
service?
> Dave the Resurrector will be run on the group, forged
>approvals will be automatically cancelled, and other programs may be run
>at the discretion of the moderators.
The term "Dave the Resurrector" is not defined, and its master undefined.
Whose decision is it whether and what functions Dave performs for the
group? Is it Chris Lewis's decision or Messrs. Barr, Phillips, and Furr?
Don't the moderators of *any* moderated group have the implied right
and responsiblity to protect their group from forged approvals and/or
cancels? Why does a poster or his ISP forfeit their right to cancel an
article?
--
Jim Riley
Chris Lewis
>It is being reposted for the author from a different news host in hopes
>of bypassing the censor(s) who do not like the opinions of the author.
Horseshit bOb. You kept trying to post it to news.admin.technical
and news.announce.newgroups which are both moderated groups and the
article is _mailed_ to the moderators.
Even after I pointed this out to you, you keep persisting in this lie.
_Nothing_ has been cancelled. It's just your own stupidity in insisting
on posting to off-topic moderated groups.
>This RFR has been posted to to the following newsgroups:
>news.admin.net-abuse.misc,news.admin.censorship,news.admin.hierarchies,news.admin.technical,news.groups,news.announce.newgroups,tor.cabal,can.infohighway,alt.journalism,alt.news.media,earth.general,alt.hell.and.back
>
>-
>Opponant: Bob "Thou Shalt Not Underestimate Me" Allisat <b...@vrx.net>
>
--
Chris Lewis: _Una confibula non sat est_
Jeanne A. E. DeVoto
In article <4s7cde$b...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, tski...@uiuc.edu wrote:
> jdf...@cyberNOTHING.org (J.D. Falk) writes:
> [on news.admin.net-abuse.reports' name]
> >> If somebody can think of a good, convincing name, I'd love to go
> >> for it.
>
> > How 'bout "results?"
>
> "I've gotten 10,000 orders for my product since I spammed, so
> there!"
>
> Ugh. Otherwise, it's good...
>
> (Hmm. Let's throw out some suggestions; somebody yell at me for
> them. .countermeasures? .reports.sightings and .reports.actions?
> Hmm...)
news.admin.net-abuse.action-reports?
news.admin.net-abuse.cleanup?
I'd like to hear more about the Dave the Resurrector involvement. Who will
have charge of the resurrector? Will it attempt to except posts canceled
by the originator ("real" cancels)? Will there be a way to cancel posts
without having Dave bring them back, and what will be the policy on who
can do a permanent cancel in these groups and why?
(This came up a day or two ago, I think, when Chris mentioned that there
were keys to get around Dave and that he would reveal them to people he
considered trustworthy. If an anti-cancelbot is actually going to be in
the charter, though, I think things ought to be tied down a little more
tightly than this.)
--
"The information superhighway is a revolution that in years to come
will transcend newspapers, radio, and television as an information source.
Therefore, I think this is the time to put some restrictions on it."
- U.S. Senator James Exon
Emma Pease
>jdf...@cyberNOTHING.org (J.D. Falk) writes:
>[on news.admin.net-abuse.reports' name]
>>> If somebody can think of a good, convincing name, I'd love to go
>>> for it.
>> How 'bout "results?"
> (Hmm. Let's throw out some suggestions; somebody yell at me for
>them. .countermeasures? .reports.sightings and .reports.actions?
>Hmm...)
.followups
.countersteps (shorter than .countermeasures)
.antidotes
.remedies
.treatments
As far as the other groups, I'm still of two minds about whether email
abuse should be split from usenet abuse in sightings and followups as
well as discussion.
Emma
--
\---- |blue|
|\* | Emma Pease Net Spinster | () |
|_\/ em...@csli.stanford.edu Die Luft der Freiheit weht | /\ |
Dave Barr
In article <4s7obd$7...@news-e2b.gnn.com>, Jim Riley <Jim...@gnn.com> wrote:
>In article <8369451...@uunet.uu.net> Tim Skirvin wrote:
>> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
>>moderated group news.admin.announce (renames news.admin.net-abuse.announce)
>> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.reports
>
>Isn't nana.reports really the rename of nana.announce?
Essentially, yes. However the original purpose of nana.announce was
more like n.a.a. It just ended up being a .reports group.
> Isn't this
>where the current moderators of nana.announce will be moving as well
>as the bulk of the traffic?
Yes, the bulk of traffic will be going to .reports.
>What is the fallback if one part of the
>proposal is defeated? You would end up with (a) nana.announce and
>nana.reports, if the "renaming" is defeated but nana.reports is approved;
>Or (b) end up news.admin.announce and *no* reports groups, if the "renaming"
>is passed and nana.reports is defeated.
Both are a possiblity, but I don't think there's a precedent for having
a partial-pass fallback plan.
>>1. The moderators feel the message is important for most or all news
>> administrators.
>
>Since this group will in effect be the Voice of the Cabal, what determines
>whether an article is "important for most or all news administrators"?
>Does approval of an article for posting imply approval by the moderators?
You're overloading the term "approval", but I understand what you mean.
As with nana.announce now, approval of the posting does not imply
the moderators approve of it. It merely means the article is appropriate.
>Take the issue of UDP. There has been in recent times, the implementation
>of UDP against Sprynet (implemented by cancellation by John Milburn), as
>well as calls for UDP via aliasing against Interramp, Earthlink, Panix,
>Rockbridge, and the Province of Ontario. Would the moderators have approved
>articles advocating any of these UDPs?
>
>What about the posting of information on the mass posting to
>alt.religion.scientology? Would Dick Depew's taking up of bincancels
>have warranted announcement? What about a rebuttal from John Stanley or
>Dave Hayes?
Perhaps yes, perhaps no. An announce group is for announcements.
More protracted discussion belongs in .misc. There's no clear line
one can draw to say "this is an announcement" and "this is a discussion".
If it's an announcement of some action someone is taking, then it's
more clear. If it's just an opinion or rebuttal to an opinion, it's
less clear.
>A lot of these problems would be simplified if news.admin.announce were
>the mouthpiece of an executive committee answerable to an actual association
>of ISPs.
If ISPs want to come forward and help out, I'm sure that would be fine.
It would be nice to have an oversight committee to back up or overrule
the moderation team in times of conflict. However I doubt such a
committee would be called upon more than a dozen times a year.
--Dave
Martin Hannigan
>It is being reposted for the author from a different news host in hopes
>of bypassing the censor(s) who do not like the opinions of the author.
>
>Tim "Gone" Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
>news.admin.net-abuse.squash.tim_skirvin.and-gang is a forum for the
Why don't you go and crawl back up the hole you came from Allisat? I'm getting
really tired of reading your shit. I won't cancel or censor you, but I will
happily engage your lies and bullshit...Grubby clone boy.
>-
>Opponant: Bob "Thou Shalt Not Underestimate Me" Allisat <b...@vrx.net>
You might be an opponent if you could spell it, and I would never underestimate
you since you are bascially a non entity and need no estimating at all.
SPANK!
--
Martin Hannigan (hann...@shore.net)
Public Key: finger hann...@shore.net
Coming soon: hann...@agents-inc.com
Kai Henningsen
tski...@uiuc.edu (Tim Skirvin) wrote on 11.07.96 in <4s1qhk$8...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>:
> kam...@tlg.net (Scot Kamins) writes:
>
> >> news.admin.net-abuse.reports Action reports about net
> >>abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
> >> news.admin.net-abuse.sightings Sightings of possible net
> >>abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>
> >I have a problem with the name "reports" in
> >"news.admin.net-abuse.reports."
>
> Join the club... <g> Unfortunately, I still haven't found a
> good replacement for it. 'actions-taken', 'determinations'...both are
> just too clumsy, IMO.
An idea I've had ...
news.admin.net-abuse.reports.sightings
news.admin.net-abuse.reports.cancels
news.admin.net-abuse.reports.misc
The last two being what you currently have as .reports.
Not because there's so much .misc reports, but actually because currently,
they just about vanish in the flood of cancel reports.
Cancel reports are good for accountability, and also if you are searching
for something specific. The .misc category, OTOH, is more for actually
reading the stuff, and thus should be low-volume.
Well, there may be ground for putting stuff like the AOL abuse report into
the high-volume group, too; in that case, .cancel would be a bad name.
Hmm.
Jamie Andrews
In general this sounds great. "nanam" is very difficult to
follow right now, and it looks like the reorg and the software
efforts are well-targeted. I just have a few problems with the
proposal as stated.
One theme of the following is that the "news" hierarchy is
supposed to be strictly about Usenet itself. Stuff about e-mail
spams has been leaking into nanam, presumably because of the
Usenet-address-capture stuff and because of connections to
various spam kings, queens, knaves and jokers. But a reorg seems
to be a good time to farm off some of that discussion to other
hierarchies -- perhaps "misc"? More specifically, "news.admin"
is supposed to be strictly about matters of interest to Usenet
news administrators.
This is not just a technical point, since some people might
start to think that the "news" in the hierarchy name means,
like, news magazine news or the 6 o'clock news.
In article <8369451...@uunet.uu.net>,
Tim Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
>Newsgroup lines:
>news.admin.announce Announcements for news adminstrators.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>news.admin.net-abuse.email Discussion of abuse of email systems.
>news.admin.net-abuse.policy Discussion of net abuse policy.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>news.admin.net-abuse.reports Action reports about net abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>news.admin.net-abuse.sightings Sightings of possible net abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>news.admin.net-abuse.usenet Discussion of abuse of the Usenet system.
...
>CHARTER: news.admin.announce
>
>news.admin.announce is a forum for important announcements for news
>administrators. It is a moderated forum, watched over by a team of
>moderators for added speed. Possible topics for messages include
>announcements regarding news transport or browsing software,
>Frequently Asked Questions lists, announcements of new EMP cancellers,
>announcements of new cancellation criteria, reports that directly
>relate to the future of Usenet, reports of major net-related
>censorship (such as the Communications Decency Act)...
Whoa, whoa. I was with you until that last part.
Who determines what is "net-related"? Seems like
misc.internet.announce and news.admin.censorship would cover
everything that needs to be covered there, unless someone passes
a bill specifically targetting Usenet.
Someone could really express a particular political stance
on censorship according to what they consider to be "important
for most or all news administrators" to see, and I would not
want such an announce group to become political in this way.
>CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.email
>news.admin.net-abuse.email is a forum for discussion of possible abuses
>of e-mail.
OK, but as I suggested above, since it's not specifically
to do with Usenet, it should be in something like "misc" rather
than "news".
>[CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.misc
>
>news.admin.net-abuse.misc is a forum for discussion of possible net
>abuse not covered by the rest of the news.admin.net-abuse.* hiearchy.
>Possible topics include ping-storming, site aliasing, denial of service
>attacks, and anything else that does not fit into the other forums in the
>news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy.
Hmm, sounds like since there's news.admin.net-abuse.usenet,
this group by definition does not fit into the "news" hierarchy.
OK, so how about:
news.admin.announce Announcements for news adminstrators.(Moderated)
misc.internet.abuse.email Discussion of abuse of email systems.
misc.internet.abuse.policy Discussion of net abuse policy.(Moderated)
misc.internet.abuse.reports Action reports about net abuse.(Moderated)
misc.internet.abuse.sightings Sightings of possible net abuse.(Moderated)
news.admin.usenet-abuse Discussion of abuse of the Usenet system.
Usenet != Internet, but at least the Internet de facto
encompasses most of Usenet at the moment, so reports and
sightings could be on the "misc" groups.
--Jamie. "It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and
ja...@cs.sfu.ca the punching equipment [c. 1950] that... the realization
came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was
going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs." -- Maurice V. Wilkes
J.D. Falk
In news.groups, Jim Riley <Jim...@gnn.com> wrote...
> >CHARTER: news.admin.announce
[ . . . ]
> Since this group will in effect be the Voice of the Cabal, what determines
> whether an article is "important for most or all news administrators"?
There Is No Cabal[tm]. The basic idea is for this to be somewhere
between news.announce.important and the current, only somewhat useful
news.admin.net-abuse.announce. Besides discussion of net abuse, this
group will also be useful for announcements of new news software, shutdown
of major sites or mail-to-news gateways, and so forth.
> Does approval of an article for posting imply approval by the moderator
Never. The moderator's job is to make sure the message is
appropriate for the group, in accordance with the group's charter.
> Take the issue of UDP. There has been in recent times, the implementation
> of UDP against Sprynet (implemented by cancellation by John Milburn), as
> well as calls for UDP via aliasing against Interramp, Earthlink, Panix,
> Rockbridge, and the Province of Ontario. Would the moderators have approved
> articles advocating any of these UDPs?
I'd think that announcements that a site has implemented the UDP
would be appropriate, but a call for UDP would not. Of course, that's
just my opinion, and the moderators may have a different interpretation of
the charter.
> A lot of these problems would be simplified if news.admin.announce were
> the mouthpiece of an executive committee answerable to an actual association
> of ISPs.
Interesting idea, but it won't happen before the end of the RFD
period, so let's save it for the /next/ reorg.
> > At any time, moderators can be added
> >or removed by a majority vote of the then-current moderators.
>
> This like most of the other moderator panels, are panels of 2. A majority
> of 2 is 2. Maybe it is time to have some larger overseeing authority
> for newsgroups central to operation of Usenet (this could also include
> news.announce.newsgroups).
Again, let's save those wild ideas for another time & place; it'd
be a shame to filibuster this reorg because people can't agree on an
unrelated topic.
As for this specific problem, perhaps a committee formed of all
the news.admin.* moderators could step in for such cases.
--
---------========== J.D. Falk <jdf...@cybernothing.org> =========---------
| "Error, no keyboard -- press F1 to continue" |
----========== http://www.cybernothing.org/jdfalk/home.html ==========----
Bruce Baugh
In article <4sch6j$f...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, tski...@uiuc.edu wrote:
> I had a very similar idea about this a while ago, as I posted
>(sortof). The main objection I see towards this is that, realistically,
>those names are *far* too long. Five levels? I don't know if we really
>need three.
Maybe just news.net-abuse.*? A non-trivial number of the most active
folks aren't administrators, after all.
--
Bruce Baugh <*> br...@aracnet.com <*> http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce
See my Web pages for
New science fiction by Steve Stirling and George Alec Effing er
Christlib, the mailing list for Christian and libertarian concerns
Daedalus Games, makers of Shadowfist and Feng Shui
Unsolicited commercial e-mail will be proofread at $50/hour, min $100.
Chris Westbury
In article <31E9DC...@earthlink.net>,
Stephen Boursy <bou...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> In article <4s76ve$7...@augusta.math.psu.edu>,
> ba...@math.psu.edu (Dave Barr) wrote:
> >
> > In article <4s75a4$1...@villa.fc.net>,
> > b...@vrx.net (Bob Allisat) wrote:
> > >
> > > This article has been systematically cancelled for the last three
> > > days.
> >
> > of a dozen insists on crossposting it to
> > news.admin.net-abuse.announce, and so it is rejected.
>
No, he said "rejected" and he means "rejected". One would think you
would know by now that if you insist on crossposting to a moderated
group, your newsreader emails your article to the moderator instead of
posting it. The moderator then posts the article or rejects it. Bob
Allisat's article was never posted by anyone and never canceled by
anyone.
> Let's assume though that you are correct that it 'should' be 'rejected'
> in news.admin.net-abuse.announce--why on earth would you cancel it in
> all the other groups and by what right?
Dave Barr did not cancel it. No one canceled it. Mr. Allisat never
posted it. He seems to think that he posted it, but he is wrong. All he
did was email it to the moderator, who rejected it.
HTH. HAND.
--
Christopher Westbury, Midtown Associates, 15 Fallon Place, Cambridge, MA 02138
Robert Bonomi
In article <emma.83...@Kanpai.Stanford.EDU>,
Emma Pease <em...@Kanpai.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
>In <4s7cde$b...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> tski...@uiuc.edu (Tim Skirvin) writes:
>
>>jdf...@cyberNOTHING.org (J.D. Falk) writes:
>>[on news.admin.net-abuse.reports' name]
>>>> If somebody can think of a good, convincing name, I'd love to go
>>>> for it.
>
>>> How 'bout "results?"
>
>> (Hmm. Let's throw out some suggestions; somebody yell at me for
>>them. .countermeasures? .reports.sightings and .reports.actions?
>>Hmm...)
>
>.followups
>.countersteps (shorter than .countermeasures)
>.antidotes
>.remedies
>.treatments
how about .sightings and .action-taken ??
Tim Skirvin
k...@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen) writes:
>news.admin.net-abuse.reports.sightings
>news.admin.net-abuse.reports.cancels
>news.admin.net-abuse.reports.misc
I had a very similar idea about this a while ago, as I posted
(sortof). The main objection I see towards this is that, realistically,
those names are *far* too long. Five levels? I don't know if we really
need three.
And if we're trying to get people to post to these things,
people that don't have that much of an idea of what's going on...short
is good.
Stephen Boursy
Bob Allisat wrote:
>
> This article has been systematically cancelled for the last three
> days.
>
> It is being reposted for the author from a different news host in
> hopes of bypassing the censor(s) who do not like the opinions of
> the author.
Well--any provider who relies on UUNET is not getting much
of a feed these days--prob. Tiny Timmy is forge canceling your
posts--he enjoys that. But your posts show up on any decent
provider--what I do is if someone boasts that their provider
accepts forged cancels is follow up on their members much more
often.
>
> Tim "Gone" Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
> : This is a formal Request for Discission (RFD) for the
> : reorganization of
> : the news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy. This is not a Call For Votes
> : (CFV); you cannot vote at this time. Procedural details are below.
Timmy is quite the censor you know Bob. He's only an 18 year
old boy supported by his mother taking a free ride through
daddys college--he's not much really to consider.
> Sounds like a great idea Timmy. Only you missed a few of the new
> absolutely necessary new newsgroups. Hope the following fills in
> the gaps and provides a more balanced perspective. BTW How many
> times a year do you fellas plan to reorganize this mess? I for
> one am getting a tittle tired of *.reorgs. Good luck anyways...
>
> REQUEST FOR RIDICULE (RFR): news.admin.net-abuse reorganization (Again?!)
>
> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.squash.tim_skirvin.and-gang
> unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.syscops.netnazis.for-real
> unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.scapgoating_minority.bashing
> unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.cryptomoderation_freaks
> unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.anti-witchhunt.proliberty
>
I vote yes Bob--please record my vote. In the spirit of the
Big Eight Vote counters though I think you should only accept votes
from those that agree with you.
> [CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.squash.tim_skirvin.and-gang
Do you know who is forge cancelling the posts Bob and what
servers are accepting the forgeries? They should be publisized
far and wide.
The Big Eight voting system is now dead. Jan Isley was
caught red handed in fixing votes and forging content cancels
on those who disagreed with him--no talk of retaking all those
corrupted votes. Any sys admin who honors this UUNET process
at monopolizing usenet newsgroups has no honor and more
importanly their users are only receiving a small fraction
of available groups and posts within all groups.
Steve
news.admin.censorship
Ricardo Hector Gonzales
Tim Skirvin (tski...@uiuc.edu) wrote:
: news.admin.announce Announcements for news adminstrators.(Moderated) (Moderated)
: news.admin.net-abuse.email Discussion of abuse of email systems.
: news.admin.net-abuse.policy Discussion of net abuse policy.(Moderated) (Moderated)
: news.admin.net-abuse.reports Action reports about net abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
: news.admin.net-abuse.sightings Sightings of possible net abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
: news.admin.net-abuse.usenet Discussion of abuse of the Usenet system.
I think all of these groups could be useful, but only if they are all
unmoderated so that all people are permitted to post their ideas. There
have been too mnay cases of the same 20 or 30 people trying to run USENET
and you've got moderators here who are all in your little club.
It's useless if you will stop people from posting ideas that are
critical of the way you 20 or 30 people are trying to run USENET. It
will force people to forge Approve lines so that they can post something
relevant to the group.
-Ric
Dave Barr
In article <31E9DC...@earthlink.net>,
Stephen Boursy <bou...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>in news.admin.net-abuse.announce--why on earth would you cancel
>it in all the other groups and by what right?
Show me the cancel message, Speedbump.
--Dave
Ralph Lindberg & Ellen Winnie
Newsgroups trimmed back to those that actually -might- be interested
During an otherwise usefull discussion Steve B injected.
In article <31E9DA...@earthlink.net>, Stephen Boursy
<bou...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Well--any provider who relies on UUNET is not getting much
>of a feed these days--prob. Tiny Timmy is forge canceling your
>posts--he enjoys that. But your posts show up on any decent
>provider--what I do is if someone boasts that their provider
>accepts forged cancels is follow up on their members much more
>often.
couldn't claim this. But (to parapharse from a Funny Thing happened on the
Way to the Forum), "..you'll never change, you'll be clueless all your
life. "
>
> Do you know who is forge cancelling the posts Bob and what
>servers are accepting the forgeries? They should be publisized
>far and wide.
> The Big Eight voting system is now dead. Jan Isley was
>caught red handed in fixing votes and forging content cancels
>on those who disagreed with him--no talk of retaking all those
>corrupted votes. Any sys admin who honors this UUNET process
>at monopolizing usenet newsgroups has no honor and more
>importanly their users are only receiving a small fraction
>of available groups and posts within all groups.
And again
--
Ralph Lindberg N7BSN e-mail to drag...@scn.org (read daily)
RV and Camping FAQ <http://kendaco.telebyte.net/rlindber/rv/
They call it "Sur'n the Net" 'cause you can wipe out so easy
Tim Skirvin
ja...@cs.sfu.ca (Jamie Andrews) writes:
> In general this sounds great. "nanam" is very difficult to
>follow right now, and it looks like the reorg and the software
>efforts are well-targeted. I just have a few problems with the
>proposal as stated.
> One theme of the following is that the "news" hierarchy is
>supposed to be strictly about Usenet itself.
True, and it's one of the few real major problems I've got with
any of this myself. The thing is, I personally think that the
news.admin.* hiearchy has become something of a general-purpose
net-related abuse place. Obviously, there's the email discussions going
on in nanam...in large part because it's the same people that are
interested (which just happen to be news admins...)
It's just a lot nicer to keep it generally together, IMO.
[n.a.announce]
>>announcements of new cancellation criteria, reports that directly
>>relate to the future of Usenet, reports of major net-related
>>censorship (such as the Communications Decency Act)...
> Whoa, whoa. I was with you until that last part.
It's basically a provision meaning "announcements for
news.admin.censorship belong here too." I'm not sure how else to
describe it. Something that directly affects what news can be
transported and why based on censorship should be allowed, IMO.
>>CHARTER: news.admin.net-abuse.email
>>news.admin.net-abuse.email is a forum for discussion of possible abuses
>>of e-mail.
> OK, but as I suggested above, since it's not specifically
>to do with Usenet, it should be in something like "misc" rather
>than "news".
comp.* has been suggested as well, but...
Robert Maas, fed up with abuse of the net
<<.sightings would effectively be what .misc is now>>
Incorrect. .misc currently contains both reports of new abuse and
general discussions what to do about abuse (such as the UDP EarthLink
threads). I think the idea is to split the actual reports (sightings)
from the discussion what to do about the abuse.
<<I think the idea is and would duplicate .email and .usenet,>>
A full logical split would have these categories:
1 Abuse of Usenet (ECP/EMP, MMF/pyramid/fraud)
a Sightings
b Discussion what to do about Usenet abuse
c Notices of cancellation
2 Abuse of e-mail (mass-unsolicited-mailing, MMF/pyramid/fraud)
a Reports of receipt
b Discussion what to do about e-mail abuse
It's not clear to me how these five classes of articles would be
distributed per the current RFD, but just guessing:
news.admin.net-abuse.email Discussion of abuse of email systems.
= 2b only??
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet Discussion of abuse of the Usenet system.
= 1b only??
news.admin.net-abuse.sightings Sightings of possible net abuse.(Moderated)
= 1a only, or 2a only, or both 1a and 2a combined?
Chris Lewis
In article <4set8b$r...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>,
Tim Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
>*sneck*, *snip*, and all the rest
>
> Folks, please don't let this thing get derailed because of a
>couple (of dozen) idiots. The RFD is important; SB and the rest aren't.
>
> Ignore them. Please. Let's actually get this done.
I suspect most other people are simply waiting patiently for the CFV.
I know I am.
Everything else is just idling the time away. Twiddling one's thumbs
as it were.
Tim Skirvin
*sneck*, *snip*, and all the rest
Folks, please don't let this thing get derailed because of a
couple (of dozen) idiots. The RFD is important; SB and the rest aren't.
Ignore them. Please. Let's actually get this done.
Followups trimmed.
- Tim Skirvin (tski...@uiuc.edu)
--
<a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin">Skirv's Homepage</a>
<a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/daemons/">The Daemons</a>
<a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/global/">The Global Killfile</a>
Zoli Fekete, keeper of hungarian-faq
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On 15 Jul 1996, Dave Barr wrote:
> In article <31E9DC...@earthlink.net>,
> Stephen Boursy <bou...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >in news.admin.net-abuse.announce--why on earth would you cancel
> >it in all the other groups and by what right?
>
> Show me the cancel message, Speedbump.
Dave, you know that, but for the sake of the newsgroups Steve is whining
to: "cancel" in this context is gruboursylese for 'you did not post it for
me when I was stupid enough to crosspost unacceptably to a moderated
group'.
- --
Zoli fek...@bc.edu, keeper of <http://www.hix.com/hungarian-faq/>
*SELLERS BEWARE: I will never buy anything from companies associated
*with inappropriate online advertising (unsolicited commercial email,
*excessive multiposting etc), and discourage others from doing so too!
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David Bromage
Ricardo Hector Gonzales (ric...@paranoia.com) wrote:
>Tim Skirvin (tski...@uiuc.edu) wrote:
>: news.admin.announce Announcements for news adminstrators.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>: news.admin.net-abuse.email Discussion of abuse of email systems.
>: news.admin.net-abuse.policy Discussion of net abuse policy.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>: news.admin.net-abuse.reports Action reports about net abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>: news.admin.net-abuse.sightings Sightings of possible net abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
>: news.admin.net-abuse.usenet Discussion of abuse of the Usenet system.
>
>I think all of these groups could be useful,
I think some of the above are redundant. .sightings would effectively be
what .misc is now and would duplicate .email and .usenet, and reports are
already posted to .announce
There is a definite need to split the email and Usenet abuse discussion.
.misc is just getting too busy to follow everything all mixed up together.
.policy has some merit. It can be the place where Speedbump & Co can argue
about why they disagree with everyone, leaving the rest of us to get on
with the real business of dealing with spam on the other newsgroups.
Cheers
David
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Bromage dbro...@metz.une.edu.au
Department of Chemistry http://metz.une.edu.au/~dbromage
University of New England "On the Internet people who are normally
Armidale, NSW 2351 under rocks are out there and in your
Australia face" - Douglas Adams
Sending me unsolicited advertising by email constitutes your
agreement to pay me US$500 per message.
Zoli Fekete, keeper of hungarian-faq
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
On Mon, 15 Jul 1996, Bruce Baugh wrote:
> Maybe just news.net-abuse.*? A non-trivial number of the most active
> folks aren't administrators, after all.
But we're talking about administrative issues (or should be ;-)). And I'd
rather not dedicate a whole second-level hierarchy to abuse, widespread as
it is ;-(.
- --
Zoli fek...@bc.edu, keeper of <http://www.hix.com/hungarian-faq/>
*SELLERS BEWARE: I will never buy anything from companies associated
*with inappropriate online advertising (unsolicited commercial email,
*excessive multiposting etc), and discourage others from doing so too!
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Patricia Rose Wrean
In article <4s1qhk$8...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>,
Tim Skirvin <tski...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
>kam...@tlg.net (Scot Kamins) writes:
>>I have a problem with the name "reports" in
>>"news.admin.net-abuse.reports."
>
> Join the club... <g> Unfortunately, I still haven't found a
>good replacement for it. 'actions-taken', 'determinations'...both are
>just too clumsy, IMO.
I'm clearly missing something here. It seems to me that the proposed
group news.admin.net-abuse.reports would be essentially what
news.admin.net-abuse.announce is now, with a change in the moderation
team and perhaps slight changes in the charter. Why not keep the
group news.admin.net-abuse.announce, with these changes, and create
both news.admin.announce and news.admin.net-abuse.sightings?
Pat [posted and emailed]
--
Patricia Wrean wr...@caltech.edu
Rich Tietjens
Patricia Rose Wrean wrote:
>
> The news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy is for discussion of abuse of Usenet
> and/or the Internet; it is not for discussion of abuse of individuals
> on such networks, such as flames or personal attacks.
Would that refer to such things as commerical spams and mass emailings
to essentially unknown targets? Or, if not, could you cite an instance
that would illustrate how one abuses an entire network?
Believe it or not, this is a serious question.
--
See us at http://www.3rdplanet.com/~starship
Support at http://www.3rdplanet.com/~starship/atari.htm
+----------------------------------------------------------+
| Opinions expressed herein are those of the writer and |
| probably diametrically opposed to those of his employer. |
+----------------------------------------------------------+
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Failure to pay will be reported to your local credit agency.
************************************************************
J.D. Falk
In news.groups, news.admin.net-abuse.misc, and news.admin.misc,
Ricardo Hector Gonzales <ric...@paranoia.com> wrote...
> Tim Skirvin (tski...@uiuc.edu) wrote:
> : news.admin.announce Announcements for news adminstrators.(Moderated) (Moderated)
> : news.admin.net-abuse.email Discussion of abuse of email systems.
> : news.admin.net-abuse.policy Discussion of net abuse policy.(Moderated) (Moderated)
> : news.admin.net-abuse.reports Action reports about net abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
> : news.admin.net-abuse.sightings Sightings of possible net abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
> : news.admin.net-abuse.usenet Discussion of abuse of the Usenet system.
>
> I think all of these groups could be useful, but only if they are all
> unmoderated so that all people are permitted to post their ideas. There
> have been too mnay cases of the same 20 or 30 people trying to run USENET
> and you've got moderators here who are all in your little club.
What little club, Ricardo? The only "little club" over in
news.admin.net-abuse.misc is the one in your fictional FAQ.
> It's useless if you will stop people from posting ideas that are
> critical of the way you 20 or 30 people are trying to run USENET. It
> will force people to forge Approve lines so that they can post something
> relevant to the group.
Easily dealt with, using existing tools.
> -Ric
--
---------========== J.D. Falk <jdf...@cybernothing.org> =========---------
| "Fifteen years ago 'cyberspace' referred to the file system |
| on a CDC6600 running NOS." |
| -- James D. Murray (he was joking) |
----========== http://www.cybernothing.org/jdfalk/home.html ==========----
J.D. Falk
In news.groups, Rich Tietjens <star...@3rdplanet.com> wrote...
> > The news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy is for discussion of abuse of Usenet
> > and/or the Internet; it is not for discussion of abuse of individuals
> > on such networks, such as flames or personal attacks.
>
> Would that refer to such things as commerical spams and mass emailings
> to essentially unknown targets? Or, if not, could you cite an instance
> that would illustrate how one abuses an entire network?
Yes, it does refer to that. In fact, spams and the like are the
reason that news.admin.net-abuse.announce and .misc (and their
predecessor, alt.current-events.net-abuse) were created.
--
---------========== J.D. Falk <jdf...@cybernothing.org> =========---------
| "A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points... |
| but it is by no means the most interesting." |
| -- Jon Pertwie as Doctor Who in "Doctor Who and |
| the Time Warrior" by Robert Holmes (BBC, 1974) |
----========== http://www.cybernothing.org/jdfalk/home.html ==========----
Jim Riley
In article <4s9568$3...@augusta.math.psu.edu> Dave Barr wrote:
>In article <4s7obd$7...@news-e2b.gnn.com>, Jim Riley <Jim...@gnn.com>
> wrote:
>>In article <8369451...@uunet.uu.net> Tim Skirvin wrote:
>>> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
>>>moderated group news.admin.announce (rename news.admin.net-abuse.announce)
>>> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.reports
>>What is the fallback if one part of the
>>proposal is defeated? You would end up with (a) nana.announce and
>>nana.reports, if the "renaming" is defeated but nana.reports is approved;
>>Or (b) end up news.admin.announce and *no* reports groups, if the
>>"renaming" is passed and nana.reports is defeated.
>
>Both are a possiblity, but I don't think there's a precedent for having
>a partial-pass fallback plan.
In most cases, you are exploding an existing group into several subgroups.
If any of the subgroup proposals fail, you can usually continue discussion
on the subgroup's topics under the main group (or perhaps a .misc group).
The fallback plan is intrinsic to such proposals.
The reorganization plan for rec.pets.cats (now under discussion) has an
explicit fallback plan in case the proposal for the meowchat group fails.
Discussion that would otherwise be off charter in the proposed .misc group
if the meowchat group is passed, would be on charter if the meowchat group
fails.
In the case of this RFD, if both proposals pass you are fine. If both fail,
you end up with the status quo. But if only one passes, then you get a
confused situation.
If *instead* the proposal were:
moderated group news.admin.announce
moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.reports (renames
news.admin.net-abuse.announce)
then if only one is passed, you end up with (a) news.admin.announce and
nana.announce for abuse reports; or (b) nana.reports, with no specific group
set aside for announcements of interest to most or all sysadmins (which is no
different than the current state, since such articles are buried in the
traffic of nana.announce).
>>>1. The moderators feel the message is important for most or all news
>>> administrators.
>>
>>Since this group will in effect be the Voice of the Cabal, what determines
>>whether an article is "important for most or all news administrators"?
>>Does approval of an article for posting imply approval by the moderators?
>
>You're overloading the term "approval", but I understand what you mean.
>As with nana.announce now, approval of the posting does not imply
>the moderators approve of it. It merely means the article is appropriate.
In this case *appropriate* means that "the moderators feel the message is
important for most or all news administrators." In a sense, your approval
means, "this is something that news admins *should* know". Perhaps a better
criterion would be:
1. The moderator feels the message is of interest to most or all news
administrators.
This would provide a basis for rejecting trivia - you could reasonably
presume that most news administrators are not interested in a high volume
group. You become more the messenger, than the message "Dave Barr feels
this is important."
--
Jim Riley
Jim Riley
>>news.admin.net-abuse.email Discussion of abuse of email systems.
>>news.admin.net-abuse.policy Discussion of net abuse policy.(Moderated)
>>news.admin.net-abuse.usenet Discussion of abuse of the Usenet system.
I don't understand the relationship between these three groups, and why
one is moderated to eliminate crossposts and the other two aren't.
Would the recent discussion about whether messages containing copyrighted
software could or should be cancelled by the copyright owner belong in
nana.policy or nana.usenet? Would the basis for this decision be whether
you wanted to let the discussion be cross-posted or not?
Why would you want to restrict cross-posting between, for example,
nana.policy and misc.legal.computing? Would a better approach be to
limit cross-posting to a small number of newsgroups, with special
restrictions on crossposting within the news.admin hierarchy?
If this were done, then I don't see the reason for nana.policy. Is there
a real distinction between discussion of abuse, and discussion of what
you're going to do about the abuse?
--
Jim Riley
J.D. Falk
In news.groups, Jim Riley <Jim...@gnn.com> wrote...
> If this were done, then I don't see the reason for nana.policy. Is there
> a real distinction between discussion of abuse, and discussion of what
> you're going to do about the abuse?
Not usually, but historically the least useful articles (all
noise, no signal) in news.admin.net-abuse.misc have been crossposted to
Hell and back for no apparent reason.
I for one had hoped that this trend would cease at some point, but
it shows no signs of stopping.
--
---------========== J.D. Falk <jdf...@cybernothing.org> =========---------
| "I may be as bad as the worst, but, thank God, |
| I am as good as the best." -Walt Whitman |
----========== http://www.cybernothing.org/jdfalk/home.html ==========----
Jonathan Grobe
Tim Skirvin writes:
> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> moderated group news.admin.announce
> (renames news.admin.net-abuse.announce)
> unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.email
> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.policy
> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.reports
> moderated group news.admin.net-abuse.sightings
> unmoderated group news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
I have a negative view of this reorganization proposal. I plan to
vote against all groups with the exception of news.admin.announce
and news.admin.net-abuse.email.
This proposal will result in each subject being discussed in several
groups. Here is where I see various types of discussion being posted
(however the kooks will crosspost and repost much more broadly!):
1. Usenet sightings
news.admin.net-abuse.misc
news.admin.net-abuse.sightings
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
2. Usenet sightings-discussion
news.admin.net-abuse.misc
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
3. Usenet actions taken
news.admin.net-abuse.misc
news.admin.net-abuse.reports
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
4. Usenet policy
news.admin.net-abuse.misc
news.admin.net-abuse.policy
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
5. Email sightings
news.admin.net-abuse.email
news.admin.net-abuse.misc
news.admin.net-abuse.sightings
6. Email sightings-discussion
news.admin.net-abuse.email
news.admin.net-abuse.misc
7. Email actions taken
news.admin.net-abuse.email
news.admin.net-abuse.misc
news.admin.net-abuse.reports
8. Email policy
news.admin.net-abuse.email
news.admin.net-abuse.misc
news.admin.net-abuse.policy
As an alternative I suggest that all the new groups be robomoderated
with the same submission address. That all articles will be posted to
one and only one of these groups depending on keywords, references...
Crossposts to non news.admin.net-abuse groups might either be
prohibited or limited to certain relevant groups (comp.mail.* groups
permitted for news.admin.net-abuse.email for example). [If the
correct group can not be determined or if it is crossposted to
unallowable groups then it be returned to the sender with suggestions
to modify appropriately or to submit to news.admin.net-abuse.misc.]
Even if this is done I think there are problems with the groups:
I think many people don't want email sightings and reports to be mixed
with Usenet sightings and reports.
Concerning reports I believe the cancel messages should be split off
as they are of low interest generally. Conversely for the non-cancel
reports, I believe they should just be in with the general discussion
[Note that currently about 10% of the non-cancel reports of action
taken (the abuser loses his account...) are posted to the moderated
news.admin.net-abuse.announce while about 90% of these are posted
to news.admin.net-abuse.misc--I see no reason why these percentages
would change for the comparable groups with the new proposal.]
So besides the new news.admin.announce and existing
news.admin.net-abuse.misc I would have the following robomoderated
groups (posts would all go the same submission address and would not
be cross-posted between these):
news.admin.net-abuse.email
news.admin.net-abuse.policy
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.cancel-reports
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.sightings
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.misc
[*.cancel-reports limited to pre-approved posters such as Chris Lewis]
--
Jonathan Grobe <gr...@netins.net> Note: All my comments on the
group-mentors list and alt.config are simply my opinion.
Dan Hartung
Rich Tietjens wrote:
> Patricia Rose Wrean wrote:
> >
> > The news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy is for discussion of abuse of Usenet
> > and/or the Internet; it is not for discussion of abuse of individuals
> > on such networks, such as flames or personal attacks.
>
> Would that refer to such things as commerical spams and mass emailings
> to essentially unknown targets? Or, if not, could you cite an instance
> that would illustrate how one abuses an entire network?
>
(As well as a FAQ.) And this is a serious answer. The n.a.n-a.* hierarchy
wasn't set up to arbiter flame wars, tell people to not be nasty, tell
people to stay on topic, or any of the various abuses that are legitimately
annoying and worthy of attention, but are of little concern to Usenet
at large. It was set up to monitor spam, deal with unwanted e-mail, and
discuss means of evolving net protocols to make self-policing easier.
Abuse ON the network tends to be personal; abuse OF the network tends
to be indiscriminate. One can easily abuse an entire network with
a fairly simple spam script: in this case, the point is that the
network is there for discussions between individuals, not mass-posted
copies of the same (usually commercial or political) text.
It's the difference between someone calling you a stupid name in
person, and someone using a bullhorn to say something innocuous.
The former is not worth your attention; the latter is noise pollution.
Seth Breidbart
>If this were done, then I don't see the reason for nana.policy. Is there
>a real distinction between discussion of abuse, and discussion of what
>you're going to do about the abuse?
Yes. Discussion of abuse is about real abuse; discussion of policy is
over the definition of abuse, and hypothetical abuse.
Seth
Phil Edwards
In case the would-be followuper isn't aware:
Newsgroups: news.groups, news.admin.net-abuse.misc, news.admin.misc
With <4sglo1$j...@openlink.openlink.com>,
it seems Robert Maas, fed up with abuse of the net (r...@BTR.Com) sez:
+ <<.sightings would effectively be what .misc is now>>
+
+ Incorrect. .misc currently contains both reports of new abuse and
+ general discussions what to do about abuse (such as the UDP EarthLink
+ threads). I think the idea is to split the actual reports (sightings)
+ from the discussion what to do about the abuse.
Well and good, but then you run into another socio-technical problem,
mentioned below. I like the idea, but then when we try to do this:...
+ A full logical split would have these categories:
+ 1 Abuse of Usenet (ECP/EMP, MMF/pyramid/fraud)
+ a Sightings
+ b Discussion what to do about Usenet abuse
+ c Notices of cancellation
+ 2 Abuse of e-mail (mass-unsolicited-mailing, MMF/pyramid/fraud)
+ a Reports of receipt
+ b Discussion what to do about e-mail abuse
...we would get what this -- and nearly every other thread in nanam
-- is, namely crossposted without restriction. Newbies trying to be
helpful will xpost because "I don't know which one to use," or "this
spam is SO BAD that just EVERYone has to be told NOW." Allisat and
others just have a wider target.
While I like the thought of breaking it down, I wonder if all we'd be
doing is organizing the flames.
Luck++;
Phil
--
http://www.cs.wright.edu/people/students/pedwards/ The gods do not
Send me commercial email and I'll send you 500MB protect fools. Fools are
in coredumps and a bill for my time. I'm a poor protected by more capable
college student; don't bother advertising to me! fools. -Larry Niven
Lee S. Bumgarner
> Not usually, but historically the least useful articles (all
> noise, no signal) in news.admin.net-abuse.misc have been crossposted to
> Hell and back for no apparent reason.
> I for one had hoped that this trend would cease at some point, but
> it shows no signs of stopping.
That's what killfiles are for. Remember, Usenet isn't the Well, shit
happens.
-l
__
Undertoad: http://falcon.jmu.edu/~bumgarls/ "Klaatu barada nictow" * "Usenet
is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to
redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts
of excrement when you least expect it. " --sp...@cs.purdue.edu (1992) * Jesus
loves you, but everyone else thinks you're an asshole * Usenet is forever
Todd C. Lawson
In article <4ska6a$9...@news2.cais.com>
jdf...@cyberNOTHING.org (J.D. Falk) writes:
> In news.groups, news.admin.net-abuse.misc, and news.admin.misc,
> Ricardo Hector Gonzales <ric...@paranoia.com> wrote...
>
> > Tim Skirvin (tski...@uiuc.edu) wrote:
> > : news.admin.announce Announcements for news adminstrators.(Moderated) (Moderated)
> > : news.admin.net-abuse.email Discussion of abuse of email systems.
> > : news.admin.net-abuse.policy Discussion of net abuse policy.(Moderated) (Moderated)
> > : news.admin.net-abuse.reports Action reports about net abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
> > : news.admin.net-abuse.sightings Sightings of possible net abuse.(Moderated) (Moderated)
> > : news.admin.net-abuse.usenet Discussion of abuse of the Usenet system.
> >
> > I think all of these groups could be useful, but only if they are all
> > unmoderated so that all people are permitted to post their ideas. There
> > have been too mnay cases of the same 20 or 30 people trying to run USENET
> > and you've got moderators here who are all in your little club.
>
> What little club, Ricardo? The only "little club" over in
> news.admin.net-abuse.misc is the one in your fictional FAQ.
Someday people will realize the folly of proclaiming that a small group
of people run Usenet. Until then, I'm happy to let them write whiny
FAQs, use '(spit)' like it was a proper name suffix, and write their
names like 'b0b' as if they've just escaped from a Doors album.
I think the proposed groups are a good idea for addressing a problem
that's out of control. You might label me one of the 'Professional No
Voters' discussed recently - I'll embrace that title. The net is
packed with too many freaks for 100 of them to band together to create
a group. And there are far too few moderated groups in existence. The
goal of moderation is not to restrict speech - it is to classify it so
as to make it useful. Some groups (like the entire alt.sports.*
hierarchy) are just spam and flames, spurning people who would
otherwise discuss the actual topic.
I'll vote in favor of most of these groups - the last one is purely
superfluous however, and will be a crossposted hell with groups like
this one. It gets a firm no.
T
====
Todd C. Lawson, Tempe, AZ, USA - FAQ maintainer, alt.fan.sandra-bullock
***NEW URL*** See Sandra at http://www.amug.org/~tlawson/sandyfaq.html
"Old litigators never die, they just lose their appeal."
Peter da Silva
In article <4t4icj$b...@globe.indirect.com>,
Todd C. Lawson <tla...@amug.org> wrote:
> The net is
> packed with too many freaks for 100 of them to band together to create
> a group.
Why, so long as the name matches the subject, should they not create a
few groups?
> And there are far too few moderated groups in existence.
The solution to which is to find more moderators.
Maybe even... shock... PAY them.
--
Peter da Silva (NIC: PJD2) `-_-' 1601 Industrial Boulevard
Bailey Network Management 'U` Sugar Land, TX 77487-5013
+1 713 274 5180 "Har du kramat din varg idag?" USA
Bailey pays for my technical expertise. My opinions probably scare them
Barry M. Schlesinger
I'm not following up to any particular post, but this is the
appropriate topic. The volume in news.admin.net-abuse.misc is to the
point where the group is difficult to use, and thus some
reorganization would be warranted. I don't read ...net-abuse.misc
regularly. I usually go there when I have received an e-mail spam
in order to find out what is known -- e.g., how widespread is it, is
it a forgery, who should reports get sent to, has the provider already
acted. In the proposed split, it is not clear to me which of the
groups would contain all of this information. In particular, it seems
to me that it might be split among many groups making the specifically
desired material even harder to find.
Based on the events of the last few days, posting this will result in
more e-mail spam. :-(
Barry Schlesinger
Scot Kamins
[e-mailed & posted]
Tim,
I haven't as yet seen a repost of the proposal with any changes in place.
Many folks (including myself) have made suggestions in a number of areas.
I assume that you're incorporating at least >SOME< of these changes.
So...what's the True Poop, dude?
Scot
Scot Kamins | Proponent, rec.collecting.books
P.O. Box 31913 | I collect Modern Library hardbacks
San Francisco 94131| (VG+/VG+ condition) 1917-1970
+1 (415) 282-8872 | with numbered DJ's.Wanna trade?
Tim Skirvin
bschle...@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov (Barry M. Schlesinger) writes:
[email spam]
>In the proposed split, it is not clear to me which of the
>groups would contain all of this information.
.sightings would contain the sightings of the mass email; you
probably wouldn't have to read it very often. .email would discuss the
email, where it came from, what's happened to track it down, etc.
.policy might be used for general discussion of "what to do about junk
email in general", but probably wouldn't have much to do with an
indiviual case. .reports would say if the spammer had been nuked.
So, yes, the information might be spread across several groups,
but that would only be for specialization purposes.
Tim Skirvin
kam...@dogeared.com (Scot Kamins) writes:
>I haven't as yet seen a repost of the proposal with any changes in place.
>Many folks (including myself) have made suggestions in a number of areas.
>I assume that you're incorporating at least >SOME< of these changes.
>So...what's the True Poop, dude?
The short version: I submitted the original RFD just before I
left on an 18-day trip. I've had some time to respond to comments and
suggestions so far, but it's not anywhere near enough.
I'm back now, and I'm working on it. And yes, I am taking
people's suggestions into account, and I think I've read just about
every post on the subject (though some may have expired by now, so I
won't be responding to them directly).
Sorry for the delay.
Barry M. Schlesinger
In article <4tido4$i...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, tski...@uiuc.edu writes...
>
> .sightings would contain the sightings of the mass email; you
>probably wouldn't have to read it very often. .email would discuss the
>email, where it came from, what's happened to track it down, etc.
>email in general", but probably wouldn't have much to do with an
>indiviual case. .reports would say if the spammer had been nuked.
>
> So, yes, the information might be spread across several groups,
>but that would only be for specialization purposes.
>
receive a mass email, in order to find out
* If anyone else has seen it
* Who it's really coming from (a lot are forged)
* What is being done about it
Once the crisis is over, I unsubscribe.
Under the proposed reorganization, I would have to subscribe to three
different groups. Under the current system, I just look for key words
in the topic on one group and read just the relevant messages. So I
don't see the /sightings/email/reports split as an improvement. A
split into a moderated information group governing announcements of
mass advertising and its disposition, a discussion group for
particular instances, and a discussion group for policy would be more
helpful. I could then go to the information group first, and that
often would be enough, and temporarily subscribe to the discussion
group only if I needed to know more what was going on.
Barry Schlesinger
Tim Skirvin
bschle...@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov (Barry M. Schlesinger) writes:
>> So, yes, the information might be spread across several groups,
>>but that would only be for specialization purposes.
>I was afraid of that. I subscribe to these groups only when I
>receive a mass email, in order to find out
>* If anyone else has seen it
>* Who it's really coming from (a lot are forged)
>* What is being done about it
>Once the crisis is over, I unsubscribe.
The problem with this is that...well, we tried it. news.admin.
net-abuse.misc used to have most of the cancel reports crossposted to it
from .announce; there was a major consensus for change. There's a lot
of people that don't like wading through lots of announcements of
sightings and such.
It's times like this that we need Dave Hayes' Psychic
Newsreader. At least virtual newsgroups do exist...